Your hormones play a huge role in your body weight, which is why hormonal imbalances can lead to weight gain or loss. In this blog, let's talk more about this relationship. We'll also discuss how your hormones change over time. Finally, we'll explore what this means for the amount of body fat you carry.

What Produces Your Hormones?

Your body produces hormones in a number of ways. This will also vary based on your gender.

Pituitary Gland

The pituitary gland is a powerhouse! It's involved in reproductive development, organ functioning, and the health of glands like your thyroid, adrenals, and gonads. More specifically, it produces human growth hormone (HGH), thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), prolactin, vasopressin, and oxytocin.

Thyroid Gland

The butterfly-shaped gland produces what many healthcare providers refer to as "thyroid hormone." This primarily consists of thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). The main function of thyroid hormone is to control the speed of your metabolism.

Adrenal Glands

Your adrenals are responsible for making aldosterone, cortisol, androgens, and estrogen. There are others, but these are the main ones.

Sex Organs

Ovaries secrete estrogen and progesterone, and testes produce testosterone.

This list isn't exhaustive, but hopefully gives you an idea of how complex this whole process is. "Hormones" is an umbrella term, and it has many layers.

What Hormones Affect Metabolism?

While again, this is a complex process with many nuances, leptin, insulin, estrogen, androgens, and growth hormone all play a prominent role in hunger cues, metabolism, and the accumulation and distribution of body fat.

Leptin

Leptin inhibits your food intake, increases energy expenditure, and decreases body fat. It also affects insulin sensitivity. That relationship is complicated, but generally, leptin increases insulin sensitivity.

What all of this means is that leptin resistance can trigger weight gain because you will feel hungrier but use less energy.

Insulin

If insulin secretion is high, it can trigger increased hunger and food intake.,2005).). Insulin resistance can interfere with appetite regulation, leading to weight gain.

Estrogen

A lack of estrogen might not only promote metabolic syndrome but also obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Androgens

Androgens help to stop the accumulation of visceral fat cells. Visceral fat is deep in your abdomen and surrounds your organs. While a little bit is necessary to protect your organs, too much can be very detrimental to your health.

Androgens also support healthy insulin sensitivity.

Human Growth Hormone

HGH helps increase your blood sugar levels when they get too low. However, if you have too much HGH, it makes it harder for insulin to do its job, which can cause high blood sugar. Once your body is done using blood sugar as energy, it stores it as fat, contributing to weight gain.

This only scratches the surface when it comes to hormonal imbalances, metabolism, how you store fat, and weight gain. We also want to offer a gentle reminder: While getting any hormonal imbalance under control is important not just for maintaining a healthy weight but for your overall health, there are other factors that play a role in your body weight. We'll talk more about those later!

How Do Our Hormones Change Over Time?

While age isn't the only factor to consider when it comes to hormonal imbalances, it's one that all of us will experience. Testosterone and estrogen levels both naturally decline with age. The thyroid gland actually shrinks and may produce lower levels of hormones. Additionally, thyroid disorders become more common as we collect more years. Leptin levels might decline, particularly in women. Insulin resistance can increase. And androgen levels go down, especially in men.

Metabolism slows down as we age, and hormonal changes are one reason why. But we want to make an important distinction here: This doesn't necessarily mean that you have hormonal imbalances, and that resolving those imbalances will contribute to weight loss. Your body might simply be experiencing the change in hormones that it's meant to.

A change in metabolism as we age is also due to a loss of muscle mass. Muscle tissue supports energy balance because it burns more calories than fat cells do. So, if you lose muscle, your body needs less energy and will thus burn less fat. This could mean you don't feel as hungry. It could also mean you experience weight gain.

All of this is to say that your hormones are only one piece of the puzzle.

Lifestyle Changes to Maintain a Healthy Weight

Once you've addressed or ruled out any hormonal imbalances or health conditions that could be contributing to your weight gain, there are a few other things you can do to maintain the physique you'd like, even as you age. (As always, we recommend you speak with a healthcare provider before making any significant lifestyle changes.)

• Maintain a balanced diet: Consider speaking with a dietitian who has experience with aging individuals. Our nutritional needs, like our hormones, change as we age! You might need fewer calories, more protein or fiber, more healthy fats, etc.

• Explore supplements: As we get older, it becomes harder for our bodies to absorb certain nutrients. Supplements can help. Do your due diligence and ensure you're shopping with a brand that ethically sources its ingredients and discloses the formulas on the labels.

• Incorporate strength training: As we said, a loss of muscle mass contributes to a slower metabolism and, thus, weight gain. Losing muscle could also mean unhealthy weight loss. Strength training comes in many forms, like lifting weights. You don't need to deadlift 300 pounds for it to count, but hanging on to muscle as best you can is excellent not only to maintain a healthy weight but to protect your bones and so much more.

Blood Testing to Check Your Hormones

While tracking your symptoms is helpful, lab work is the most accurate way to identify hormonal imbalances and other potential health issues.

eNational Testing offers the Women's Anti-aging Panel and Men's Anti-aging Panel to check for metabolic issues, heart health, and much more. We have more than 2,700 testing centers around the nation and even offer same-day appointments. Find a testing center near you.